The spring had advanced so far that there were now days when it was
pleasant to be out in the soft warmth of the afternoons. The day when
Ewbert climbed to the Hilbrook homestead it was even a little hot, and
he came up to the dooryard mopping his forehead with his handkerchief,
and glad of the southwestern breeze which he caught at this point over
the shoulder of the hill. He had expected to go round to the side door
of the house, where he had parted with Hilbrook on his former visit; but
he stopped on seeing the old man at his front door, where he was looking
vaguely at a mass of Spanish willow fallen dishevelled beside it, as if
he had some thought of lifting its tangled spray. The sun shone on his
bare head, and struck silvery gleams from his close-cropped white hair;
there was something uncommon in his air, though his dress was plain and
old-fashioned; and Ewbert wished that his wife were there to share his
impression of distinction in Hilbrook's presence.
He turned at Ewbert's cheerful hail, and after a moment of apparent
uncertainty as to who he was, he came down the walk of broken brick and
opened the gate to his visitor.
"I was just out, looking round at the old things," he said, with an
effort of apology. "This sort of weather is apt to make fools of us. It
gets into our heads, and before we know we feel as if we had something
to do with the season."
"Perhaps we have," said the minister. "The spring is in us, too."
The old man shook his head. "It was once, when we were children; now
there's what we remember of it. We like to make believe about
it,--that's natural; and it's natural we should make believe that there
is going to be a spring for us somewhere else like what we see for the
grass and bushes, here, every year; but I guess not. A tree puts out its
leaves every spring; but by and by the tree dies, and then it doesn't
put out its leaves any more."
"I see what you mean," said Ewbert, "and I allow that there is no real
analogy between our life and that of the grass and bushes; yet somehow I
feel strengthened in my belief in the hereafter by each renewal of the
earth's life. It isn't a proof, it isn't a promise; but it's a
suggestion, an intimation."
They were in the midst of a great question, and they sat down on the
decaying doorstep to have it out; Hilbrook having gone in for his hat
and come out again, with its soft wide brim shading his thin face,
frosted with half a week's beard.
"But character," the minister urged at a certain point,--"what becomes
of character? You may suppose that life can be lavished by its Origin in
the immeasurable superabundance which we see in nature. But
character,--that is a different thing; that cannot die."
"The beasts that perish have character; my old dog had. Some are good
and some bad; they're kind and they're ugly."
"Ah, excuse me! That isn't character; that's temperament. Men have
temperament, too; but the beasts haven't character. Doesn't that fact
prove something,--or no, not prove, but give us some reasonable
expectation of a hereafter?"
Hilbrook did not say anything for a moment. He broke a bit of fragrant
spray from the flowering currant--which guarded the doorway on his side
of the steps; Ewbert sat next the Spanish willow--and softly twisted the
stem between his thumb and finger.
"Ever hear how I came to leave Hilbrook,--West Mallow, as it was then?"
he asked at last.
Ewbert was forced to own that he had heard a story, but he said, mainly
in Hilbrook's interest, that he had not paid much attention to it.
"Thought there wa'n't much in it? Well, that's right, generally
speakin'. Folks like to make up stories about a man that lives alone
like me, here; and they usually get in a disappointment. I ain't goin'
to go over it. I don't care any more about it now than if it had
happened to somebody else; but it did happen. Josiah got the girl, and I
didn't. I presume they like to make out that I've grieved over it ever
since. Sho! It's forty years since I gave it a thought, that way." A
certain contemptuous indignation supplanted the wonted gentleness of the
old man, as if he spurned the notion of such sentimental folly. "I've
read of folks mournin' all their lives through, and in their old age
goin' back to a thing like that, as if it still meant somethin'. But it
ain't true; I don't suppose I care any more for losin' her now than
Josiah would for gettin' her if he was alive. It did make a difference
for a while; I ain't goin' to deny that. It lasted me four or five
years, in all, I guess; but I was married to somebody else when I went
to the war,"--Ewbert controlled a start of surprise; he had always taken
it for granted that Hilbrook was a bachelor,--"and we had one child. So
you may say that I was well over that first thing. _It wore out_; and if
it wa'n't that it makes me mad to have folks believin' that I'm
sufferin' from it yet, I presume I shouldn't think of it from one year's
end to another. My wife and I always got on well together; she was a
good woman. She died when I was away at the war, and the little boy died
after I got back. I was sorry to lose her, and I thought losin' _him_
would kill me. It didn't. It appeared one while as if I couldn't live
without him, and I was always contrivin' how I should meet up with him
somewhere else. I couldn't figure it out."
Hilbrook stopped, and swallowed dryly. Ewbert noticed how he had dropped
more and more into the vernacular, in these reminiscences; in their
controversies he had used the language of books and had spoken like a
cultivated man, but now he was simply and touchingly rustic.
"Well," he resumed, "that wore out, too. I went into business, and I
made money and I lost it. I went through all that experience, and I got
enough of it, just as I got enough of fightin'. I guess I was no worse
scared than the rest of 'em, but when it came to the end I'd 'bout made
up my mind that if there was another war I'd go to Canady; I was sick of
it, and I was sick of business even before I lost money. I lost pretty
much everything. Josiah--he was always a good enough friend of
mine--wanted me to start in again, and he offered to back me, but I said
no. I said if he wanted to do something for me, he could let me come
home and live on the old place, here; it wouldn't cost him anything like
so much, and it would be a safer investment. He agreed, and here I be,
to make a long story short."
Hilbrook had stiffened more and more, as he went on, in the sort of
defiance he had put on when he first began to speak of himself, and at
the end of his confidence Ewbert did not venture any comment. His
forbearance seemed to leave the old man freer to resume at the point
where he had broken off, and he did so with something of lingering
challenge.
"You asked me just now why I didn't think character, as we call it, gave
us some right to expect a life after this. Well, I'll try to tell you. I
consider that I've been the rounds, as you may say, and that I've got as
much character as most men. I've had about everything in my life that
most have, and a great deal more than some. I've seen that everything
wears out, and that when a thing's worn out it's for good and all. I
think it's reasonable to suppose that when I wear out it will be for
good and all, too. There isn't anything of us, as I look at it, except
the potentiality of experiences. The experiences come through the
passions that you can tell on the fingers of one hand: love, hate, hope,
grief, and you may say greed for the thumb. When you've had them, that's
the end of it; you've exhausted your capacity; you're used up, and so's
your character,--that often dies before the body does."
"No, no!" Ewbert protested. "Human capacity is infinite;" but even while
he spoke this seemed to him a contradiction in terms. "I mean that the
passions renew themselves with new occasions, new opportunities, and
character grows continually. You have loved twice, you have grieved
twice; in battle you hated more than once; in business you must have
coveted many times. Under different conditions, the passions, the
potentiality of experiences, will have a pristine strength. Can't you
see it in that light? Can't you draw some hope from that?"
"Hope!" cried Ransom Hilbrook, lifting his fallen head and staring at
the minister. "Why, man, you don't suppose I _want_ to live hereafter?
Do you think I'm anxious to have it all over again, or _any_ of it? Is
that why you've been trying to convince me of immortality? I know
there's something in what you say,--more than what you realize. I've
argued annihilation up to this point and that, and almost proved it to
my own mind; but there's always some point that I can't quite get over.
If I had the certainty, the absolute certainty, that this was all there
was to be of it, I wouldn't want to live an hour longer, not a minute!
But it's the uncertainty that keeps me. What I'm afraid of is, that if I
get out of it here, I might wake up in my old identity, with the
potentiality of new experiences in new conditions. That's it I'm tired.
I've had enough. I want to be let alone. I don't want to do anything
more, or have anything more done to me. I want to _stop_."
Ewbert's first impression was that he was shocked; but he was too honest
to remain in this conventional assumption. He was profoundly moved,
however, and intensely interested. He realized that Hilbrook was
perfectly sincere, and he could put himself in the old man's place, and
imagine why he should feel as he did. Ewbert blamed himself for not
having conceived of such a case before; and he saw that if he were to do
anything for this lonely soul, he must begin far back of the point from
which he had started with him. The old man's position had a kind of
dignity which did not admit of the sort of pity Ewbert had been feeling
for him, and the minister had before him the difficult and delicate task
of persuading Hilbrook, not that a man, if he died, should live again,
but that he should live upon terms so kind and just that none of the
fortuities of mortal life should be repeated in that immortality. He
must show the immortal man to be a creature so happily conditioned that
he would be in effect newly created, before Hilbrook would consent to
accept the idea of living again. He might say to him that he would
probably not be consulted in the matter, since he had not been consulted
as to his existence here; but such an answer would brutally ignore the
claim that such a man's developed consciousness could justly urge to
some share in the counsels of omnipotence. Ewbert did not know where to
begin, and in his despair he began with a laugh.
"Upon my word," he said, "you've presented a problem that would give any
casuist pause, and it's beyond my powers without some further thought.
Your doubt, as I now understand it, is not of immortality, but of
mortality; and there I can't meet you in argument without entirely
forsaking my own ground. If it will not seem harsh, I will confess that
your doubt is rather consoling to me; for I have so much faith in the
Love which rules the world that I am perfectly willing to accept
reëxistence on any terms that Love may offer. You may say that this is
because I have not yet exhausted the potentialities of experience, and
am still interested in my own identity; and one half of this, at least,
I can't deny. But even if it were otherwise, I should trust to find
among those Many Mansions which we are told of some chamber where I
should be at rest without being annihilated; and I can even imagine my
being glad to do any sort of work about the House, when I was tired of
resting."